Blame it on the Bass: Heart of Fame, Book 6 Read online

  He shoved Corbin’s jeans down his hips, pushing his boxers with them. He squeezed Corbin’s rigid cock, tugged on his balls. Corbin had no hope of holding back his surrendering cry when—without warning—Levi spun him around and bent him over the back of the sofa.

  His feet tangled, enough to throw him off balance. Levi caught him, gripping his right hip with tight fingers as his other hand smoothed up his back, holding him trapped against the piece of furniture.

  Corbin fought against the position, a weak struggle fueled not by resistance but by searing arousal. Fuck, he’d never been so turned on, and so fucking conflicted.

  When Levi’s hand moved to cup and knead his sac, a raw plea slipped past his lips.

  When Levi stroked a fierce path up to his anus, he hissed in capitulating need.

  His ass clenched, anticipating the penetration. But it didn’t come. Instead, Levi returned his hand to Corbin’s groin and once again palmed his sac. Pumped his cock.

  Corbin groaned, pushing his ass backward, desperate for Levi’s possession of his entry. “Yes,” he panted.

  The sharp sting of Levi’s hand on the side of his right butt cheek made him cry out. A thick spasm claimed his cock. Raw pleasure and hungry surrender ruled his body.

  Fingers stroked over his anus again, wet this time. Very wet.

  Corbin pushed back once more, aching for those fingers to enter him.

  Once again, they didn’t. And once again, Levi smacked Corbin’s ass instead.

  Fresh need flooded him. Made his cock jerk. Levi wrapped his fingers around its length and pumped, each stroke a punishing force of animalistic power.

  Colors bloomed in Corbin’s vision. His head swam. He drove his fingers into the edge of the sofa, his eyes shut tight.

  And fuck, there was the image again—Levi kissing the woman. Kissing Sonja.

  “I…I can’t…” he gasped, shaking his head. “Going to…going to come…soon.”

  In response, Levi slid wet fingers over his anus. Over the puckered hole.

  Into it.

  “Yes,” he ground out, driving back into the invasion, trying to straighten as he did so.

  Levi slammed him back over the sofa’s edge again with a firm hand. Held him there. Refusing to let him move. Fucking his ass with his fingers. Two? Three? Corbin couldn’t tell. Didn’t care. Fuck, he was going to explode soon. So good. So fucking—

  Levi withdrew his fingers with a swift jerk. Corbin cried out in protest. “No!” He moved to straighten again, to turn to his lover.

  And was shoved back down over the sofa.

  Held there.

  The sound of a zipper filled the room, incongruously loud amongst Corbin’s shallow pants and moans. The sound of material clumping to the floor followed.

  Every nerve ending and fibre in Corbin’s body prepared for Levi’s cock. Strained for it. Ached for it. Craved it.

  It didn’t matter it was rough. It didn’t matter it was going to hurt. He deserved the pain for what he’d done to Levi. For abandoning him when they both grieved. He deserved it. Welcomed it.

  Wanted it.

  Wanted Levi. Always would. Levi. Only Levi.

  The image of Levi kissing Sonja on the stage slammed through Corbin’s head—hot, wild and more arousing than ever.

  Fuck, he was going to come. Come. Any second. He needed…he needed Levi. Now. Now.

  Levi slid his wet fingers into Corbin anus, spreading him wide. Withdrew.

  And then nothing.

  Nothing.

  Corbin twisted on the sofa’s edge, staring over his shoulder up at Levi.

  Anguished desire and tortured need etched his lover’s face, a face Corbin knew better than his own soul. Levi’s gaze jerked to him. His body seemed locked in frozen torment.

  In an instant, Corbin understood. “Just spit on my ass, grab your cock and get to it,” he begged. “Now. Before I fucking come without you inside—”

  Levi penetrated him. With one savage thrust, Levi impaled his cock deep into Corbin’s ass.

  Excruciating pain tore through him, radiating from his stretched flesh. Levi was thick and large and Corbin’s hole was tight. Hot ribbons of pain threaded through the intense pleasure of the penetration and pushed it to something sublime.

  He roared, arching at the exquisite sensations detonating through him. Slamming back into Levi’s wild thrusts, he met him in force and need with each one.

  This was his punishment and his reward—Levi. Possessing him, dominating him. Loving him. God, he hoped he still loved him.

  Fuck, what if he didn’t? What if he—

  Levi pressed his stomach to Corbin’s back, grabbed Corbin’s cock in a tight fist and pumped. Up and down, up and down, in perfect harmony with his driving thrusts, his grip growing tighter with each stroke.

  It was too much.

  He could survive no more.

  Surrendering himself completely to the elemental pleasure of it all, of Levi’s cock in his ass and his cock in Levi’s hand, Corbin gave himself over to his orgasm.

  He came. Thick ropes of come spurted from him, splashing the back of the leather sofa. He moaned with each one, his knees trembling, his heart pounding in his ears. So fast. So loud.

  And then Levi dug his fingers into his flesh, scraped over his hip, choked his cock and Corbin felt his lover’s seed fill his ass.

  Felt Levi lose himself to his own orgasm.

  For a lifetime, they came together, their bodies controlled only by pleasure and its release. A lifetime after that, Levi slumped onto Corbin, his heart thumping like a hammer against Corbin’s back.

  Silence stretched between them.

  Long. Heavy.

  Finally, Levi moved. Not to step away, not to withdraw his length from Corbin’s ass, but to press his lips to the flesh between Corbin’s shoulder blades. “I’m sorry, my love,” he whispered against Corbin’s skin, his beard a tickling caress. “That was…that was wrong. I shouldn’t have…I shouldn’t have done that…punished you that way. I should…I should…fuck, I’m sorry, Corbin. Please don’t ever leave me again. Please. I’m sorry.”

  Corbin closed his eyes, Levi’s outpouring shearing into his heart.

  “Say something, Cor,” Levi pleaded, his voice a hoarse croak. “Tell me what’s in your head right now.”

  His blood roaring in his ears, his gut a knotted mess, his whole body thrumming with charged energy, Corbin opened his eyes, twisted beneath Levi’s weight and gazed back at the man he loved more than any other. “I think,” he said, forcing calm to each word, “I would like to invite Sonja to our bed.”

  Chapter Four

  Standing under the shower for fifteen minutes didn’t help. Levi’s mind still roared with Corbin’s words, a hurricane of wretched shock. A maelstrom of dark thoughts.

  Killing the water—icy cold and stingingly hard—he closed his eyes, clenched his fists and pressed his forehead to the tiles before him.

  His body chilled, the cool air of the bathroom licking at his wet skin. His nipples pinched into tight tips, a perverse pleasure of physical sensation he closed his mind to.

  With a strangled groan, Levi dragged his hand down his face. The excess water in his beard dribbled from his jaw and chin to his feet, each drop somehow a drilling echo in the oppressive silence. He opened his eyes and stared at his feet. A detached part of his mind—that part not whirling with Corbin’s request—studied the trickles of moisture running over his flesh before disappearing down the drain.

  His blood pounded in his ears.

  His stomach clenched.

  His balls throbbed.

  He closed his eyes again, drawing a deep slow breath.

  Corbin waited for him somewhere in the house. Normally after sex they’d shower together, but this time his lover hadn’t followed him to the bathroom, leaving him to shower alone.

  No doubt to give Levi the chance to think.

  A dry snort tore at the back of Levi’s throat. To think? That was an unders
tatement. He’d stood under the cold water, head down, hands flat to the wall and barely survived the assault on his mind. For a musician, Levi’s brain worked in a very left-sided way. He enjoyed the unquestionable reason of numbers, the comfort of logical thought. Throughout his childhood, until the age of fourteen when his high school music teacher had busted him doing his math homework in class and handed him a guitar—he’d always thought he was going to be a mathematician. When Mrs. Salvog handed him the school’s sole Stratacaster and told him he had lunch detention during which he had to figure out how to play it using math, the focus of his life shifted. But there was math in music, and Levi lost himself in both.

  There was no answer to Corbin’s request in music, numbers or logic, however. In amongst the turbulence of his thoughts, Levi had tried his best to find the calm of numbers. He’d calculated the average rest beats in every song he’d recorded, he’d considered the time pattern Samuel had created in the lyrics of “Lily’s Song”, the song they were planning to record for Dead Even 2. He’d analysed the rhythm structure of the last soundtrack he’d written for Spielberg.

  He’d done all those things and no answers to Corbin’s request presented themselves. None that made any sense at least.

  Here they were, after two months of emotional separation, two months after the loss of their daughter before they even had the chance to cherish her, hold her, finally together again, and his lover was talking about bringing a woman into their bed. How did that make any logical sense?

  It didn’t.

  They should be addressing their issues. They should be approaching the situation of their loss with calm, modulated control.

  Yeah, just like the calm, modulated way you fucked him out there, right? The way you punished him for how he’d made you feel? The way you punished yourself for being unable to show him your emotions. The way you punished yourself for the way Sonja made you—

  A hot itch scratching at the back of his head told him he wasn’t alone.

  Straightening from the wall, he turned.

  Corbin stood at the mouth of the shower bay, fully dressed once again, his gaze fixed on the ceiling above Levi’s head.

  The en-suite bathroom was large and opulent. One entire end of the room was dedicated to the shower, which comprised five separate showerheads that could be individually controlled. Along with the jets, there were two suspended stainless steel bars Levi would, when the mood took him, bind Corbin’s wrists to. Fucking his lover in the shower while Corbin could do nothing but beg for more had become a regular activity before the funeral.

  Now…

  An image of Sonja in the shower flashed through Levi’s head, her arms above her head, her breasts uplifted, Corbin’s lips circling one dusky nipple as Levi slowly sank his cock into her—

  “Is this another one of those things we’re going to pretend didn’t happen?”

  Levi drew a sharp breath at Corbin’s question, the implication behind the words smothering the wholly unexpected vision of Sonja at their mercy.

  He scowled at his partner. “I never pretended Isabella didn’t die, Cor.”

  “True. But if I recall correctly, this is the very place you spent the morning after we got the news. In this shower, with your head down, the water freezing. When you finally came out you’d shut whatever was in your heart, in your soul away.”

  Levi narrowed his eyes. “And then you withdrew from me.”

  Corbin’s jaw bunched. “What else was I meant to do? I wear my heart on my sleeve, Levi. You’ve known that from the moment we met. And your heart is locked in a fucking steel box guarded by a wall of impenetrable ice. For fuck’s sake, babe, we’d just lost our daughter. I needed to see you mourn. I needed to mourn with you. Fuck, I needed to know you were sharing your grief with me and I didn’t. Because you didn’t.”

  Levi ground his teeth and turned his head away. That they were having this argument now, while Levi was naked and still dripping with water should have infuriated him. That it was happening while disturbing thoughts of his old high school girlfriend whispered through his head should have sickened him.

  Neither was the case.

  Because Corbin was correct. Levi had confessed as much to Nick only that very morning. He should have let Corbin see his pain instead of locking it away.

  But that’s what Levi had always done. Lock away any emotions, any reactions that left him vulnerable. He kept them tightly controlled, constrained. Kept them from view and didn’t allow them to be used as a weapon by those who were meant to protect you.

  It was a lesson he’d learnt as a child. A child desperate to understand the world when the only thing he’d understood was numbers.

  And then music.

  Staring hard at the glass-tiled wall beside him, he balled his hands into fists. “I should have let you grieve with me,” he said, the words a raw pain in his chest. “I should have…I should have shared that with you. I know that. But what I don’t understand is why you now want us to…why you want to ask…”

  He faltered. Not because the words ask Sonja into our bed were too disturbing to vocalize, but because his body reacted the second they formed in his head.

  A heavy spasm claimed his cock. His balls tensed. His pulse quickened and his throat grew tight.

  Fuck, how could this be more messed up? How could he—

  “Because I’ve never seen you so open than when you were with her.”

  Corbin’s low statement, uttered on a voice strained with confusion, scraped at Levi’s fraying control.

  He returned his gaze to his lover. “I’m open with you,” he said, the claim ridiculous to his own ears.

  Corbin laughed a harrowed chuckle that tore Levi’s heart. “You tell me you love me, babe, and I know you do—at least I hope you still do, but open?” He shook his head. “When I watched you sing with Sonja, when I watched you smile with her, laugh with her, Christ, I wanted to cry. And then I watched you kiss her on the stage and everything changed.”

  Levi swallowed. “You saw it? Not just at the booth, but on the stage?”

  Corbin dipped his head. “I’d come home to tell you I was sorry, to beg you to forgive me for deserting you. I saw you walking towards Do Re Me and followed you. When I finally caught up, you were on the stage singing with her.” He chuckled again, the sound less hollow this time. “You have an incredible voice, babe. I know why you don’t sing lead. I know you can’t bear that kind of attention, but fuck me, your voice is incredible. And I stood there listening to you, losing myself in the power of your voice, loving you, aching for you, hearing your grief in the words you sang even as I watched you come to life on the stage next to her… I stood there wanting you on every level possible, and then you kissed her and I wanted that as well.”

  The words caressed Levi’s sanity. Not just because Corbin spoke them, but because they stroked Levi’s body with the memory of Sonja’s lips under his.

  His cock pulsed.

  Corbin’s gaze fell to the stirring organ. His nostrils flared at the sight greeting him—a dick only a moment ago flaccid, now semi-stiff. And growing harder.

  “I want to feel that life in you, Levi,” he said, motionless. “I want to experience it with you, and if Sonja is what makes you alive…even if only for the moment…if Sonja—whoever she is—is what helps you find the way out of your numb refusal to feel anything with me, then I want her to help you. Just let me be there as she does. Let me be there when you finally live again. And then be alive with me.”

  The knot in Levi’s gut was a twisted ball of torment. “I am alive with you, Cor,” he said, his voice a broken whisper.

  Corbin shook his head. “No, you’re not. Not at the moment. But you were with her, so alive the world damn near shook with the force. Everyone in that bar could feel it, babe. They feasted on it, thrived on it. And I did too.”

  He took a step forward, and Levi couldn’t help but notice that, even though pain swam in Corbin’s blue eyes, the crotch of his jeans was t
ented.

  Corbin was aroused.

  By the sight of Levi naked and wet before him? Or by the memory of Levi kissing Sonja?

  Does it matter?

  Tight pain strapped around Levi’s chest and he ground his teeth. It didn’t. At this point in time, it didn’t.

  Letting out a long, slow breath, he met his lover’s stare. “You really want this? You want me to invite my old high school girlfriend into our bed?”

  Corbin’s Adam’s apple slid up and down the smooth column of his throat. “I do.”

  Levi’s heart thumped fast at the answer. “So you can watch me fuck her?”

  When Corbin shook his head, Levi’s breath caught. “You want us both…” He stopped. Stared at the man he loved.

  “Yes.”

  Levi felt hot, eager blood flood into his already stiffening cock. “You want to fuck me while I’m fucking her?”

  Corbin nodded. The bulge in his jeans twitched.

  “You want to be inside my body while I’m inside hers?”

  “Yes. And…more.”

  A thick spasm claimed Levi’s dick at the assertion. “Do you want to fuck her as well, Cor? You’ve never been with a woman before. You told me so years ago. Do you want to feel your cock sink into her slick, wet pussy?”

  The faintest groan fell from Corbin’s lips. But still, he didn’t move. Didn’t crumble.

  Levi stared at him. He hungered for what Corbin suggested. No, not just hungered for it. Craved it.

  Needed it.

  “How is it possible,” he whispered, every molecule in his body aching for Corbin, “that the man I love more than life knew I was in such a numb state when I didn’t?”

  Corbin’s lips stretched in a smile so haunted Levi damn near crumpled to the ground. “That’s what love is, Levi. Knowing the secrets of the soul even when they’re not spoken aloud.”

  A hot lump filled Levi’s throat. “Is this how we move forward? Is this how we fix us?”

  Corbin shrugged. “It’s how we begin, I think.”

  “What happens if she says no?”